Harmonised European Time Use Survey 2000 (HETUS 2000)

Summary

The data is useful in understanding how people of different age groups spend their time. Thanks to the HETUS guidelines, the data is consistent among the participating countries. Eurostat developed the guidelines during the late 1990s and a final draft was published in 2000. However, it is also reported that there are substantial differences with regard to sample, selection of diary days, survey period, response rates, and estimation procedures, causing problems to a varying degree. One important difference has to do with population delimitation, which diverges considerably. For example, Italy contributes to the database with diary data for individuals from 3 years of age, whereas the youngest contributors in the Swedish data are 20 years. The rest of the countries falls somewhere in-between these extremes. The upper age limit starts at 84. Some countries have no upper age limit. Finally, since the respondents filled in diaries for one or two randomly designated days, these diaries are to be seen as short, random moments in people’s lives. They cannot thus be regarded as representative to the single individuals. Therefore measures of the time use are meaningful only when they are calculated for groups of individuals of considerable size.

Type of data

Data Source
Survey

Type of Study
Survey same

Data gathering method
Other: Respondents were asked to record their daily activities in a diary

Access to data

Conditions of access
Data is easy to access and download via the Eurostat website. To use the HETUS (Harmonised European Time Use Survey) website, one can easily access the prepared tables; however, the ability to make customised tables is restricted.

Type of available data (e.g. anonymised microdata, aggregated tables, etc.)
Aggregated tables

Formats available
Excel, CSV, HTML, SPSS, TSV, PDF

Coverage

Coverage Years of collection, reference years, and sample sizes
Data collected between 1998 and 2006 Sample size of 12,600 Participating countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Estonia, Spain, France, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Finland, United Kingdom, Sweden and Norway

First year of collection
For this dataset, the first year of collection was in 1998; however, countries have been conducting this survey since the 1980s and 1990s.

Stratification if applicable
Level of urbanisation

Base used for sampling

Geographical coverage and breakdowns
NUTS

Age range
Generally: 20 to 74; Belgium: 12+; Bulgaria: 7+; Germany: 10+; Estonia: 10+; Spain: 10+; France: 15+; Italy: 3+; Latvia: 10+; Lithuania: 10+; Poland: 15+; Slovenia: 10+; Finland: 10+; United Kingdom: 8+; Norway: 9-79.

Statistical representativeness
Population representative

Coverage of main and cross-cutting topics
The European Time Use Survey (HETUS) provides data on time spent on various activities and the proportion of individuals that spent some time doing the activities during the day they kept the time diary. It is particularly helpful when studying time spent in paid work compared to unpaid work, household division between men and women, time spent to travel to work, time spent on care activities and volunteering, as well as when studying activities people carry out in their leisure time. Additionally, the survey provides rich background data such as age; sex; marital status; general health (including times one felt rushed); occupation; educational attainment; number of members and age structure of the household; financial help and payments for childcare and care of adults, cleaning and shopping; household income; possession of TV, phone, mobile, PC, deep freezer, microwave and other household appliances; and type of accommodation. The survey allows for cross-gender and cross-national comparison.

Linkage

Standardisation
The main classification system used in the Harmonised European Time Use Surveys (HETUS) is the "Activity coding list" (ACL). The ACL assigns a code to the activities (primary and secondary) that the person is doing during the day.The ISCO-88 was used for coding occupation, ISCED-97 was used to code education and NACE was used for coding economic activities.

Possibility of linkage among databases
No

Data quality

Entry errors if applicable
The data has been controlled for quality and validity.

Breaks
National Statistical Institutes are responsible for the collection of data.

Consistency of terminology or coding used during collection
With the creations of HETUS, the data from the different countries should be consistent.

Governance

Contact information
Unit F2: Labour Market
Eurostat

2920 Luxembourg Luxembourg Phone: +352 4301 36789 / 34567
Email:
Url: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/statistics/search_database; https://www.h2.scb.se/tus/tus/default.htm

Timeliness, transparency
Data was collected between 1998 and 2006. Most recent contributions of national statistical offices were in January 2007 (Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Spain and UK), in July 2007 (Bulgaria, Estonia and Latvia), and in late 2007-2008 (Belgium, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia). The general recommendation is to collect TUS every 5-10 years. Currently only data for the HETUS 2000 are available at European level.